How to Make a Blind Hem with a Serger

Craftsy sewing instructor, Angela Wolf, knows tailoring, and she knows serging. Her first online sewing class at Craftsy was Tailoring Ready to Wear, and now she’s back with a new sewing class called Creative Serging: Beyond the Basics. But right here on the Craftsy blog, we’re giving you exclusive, free video lessons from Angela. In the video below, Angela demonstrates how easy it is to create a neat, strong blind hem with your serger. Watch this to put a professional touch on your garments using your serging skills (and Angela’s secrets to success)!

Hi, I’m Angela Wolf and I’m a sewing instructor on Craftsy. This is just a quick free tip on how to do a blind hem with a serger. A blind hem, like you see on pants—a lot of time nice dress pants, skirts, where on the outside all you see are these itty bitty snips of your thread. Here’s another sample, this is what it shouldn’t be by the way, if you’re doing a blind hem, but you can see where those snips are a little bit better. So obviously you’d use a thread that matches. So from the back it basically serges this edge, trims it at the same time, serges it and attaches it to your layer- all in one easy step.

So there’s one thing that you need, this is an attachment for the serger that is an optional. If you don’t have it don’t worry because you can also do it without it but this just makes it really easy. So what this is- this is the foot and then you have this plastic attachment and this little knob. So you can see when I turn the knob, the plastic moves; see how it’s moving over towards the left, just like that? So basically what this does, is when you have your fabric, let me show you right like this- your fabric will basically slide right up against this plastic. That’s what it’s there for. So again, if you don’t have this foot, you just have to use a piece of tape or something to know exactly where you’re sewing.

So here’s the foot. Make sure your needle is out of the way; it’s very easy it just clips right on, just like that. So you can kind of see, here’s your knife, here’s your plastic. Now I had moved that a little bit so I’m going to move it back closer to the foot because remember my fabric is going to roll through here and then part of it’s going to be cut off. You’ll see that in a minute.

Up here, for our settings we need to change a few things. I’m using the left needle and I have that slackened it’s down to number one. You can even go down to zero if you need to. Zero to two is usually the best. We’re not using the right needle. On the upper looper I’ve strengthened that by increasing the tension to six. And then on the final one, I have decreased the tension to three. So you might have to adjust a little bit depending on what fabric you’re using, but that’s what mine it set at. We’re not doing anything to the differential feed or anything to the stitch length it’s all just for standard serging.

So let me show you how to change this to wrap this fabric. If this is my hem and this is my hem allowance you basically take this and flip it- just like this. That’s it. Let me do it one more time for you. Take it, and flip it exactly the same way that you do a blind hem on a sewing machine. And I’m going to take this and put this under the foot. So you can see now, the purpose of this. The fold of the fabric, which, if you would kind of compare this, the fold of the fabric is what goes underneath and rubs up against this plastic and then the knife cuts off the excess. So picture that’s what that would be. So I don’t know if I have this set exactly, so I’m just going to show you the stitch and then hopefully we’re close. This is all you do. Don’t pull the fabric. Don’t stretch the fabric. Just let it feed through. Make sure to leave a long chain so your machine doesn’t come undone, your stitches and here we go. So there’s the blind hem. Now I would run this through on a practice and that would be just a little too thick for me so I would shorten it, but if you’re using a wool or something like that you wouldn’t even notice this. So that’s it, all in one easy step you can finish the edge and do a blind hem all with your serger. For more serging tips, check out my class on Craftsy.

If you liked this tip, be sure to catch Angela’s technique for easy pintucking from earlier this week, and learn more about her here.

7 Comments

Fantastic video on blind hem on a serger. You have a great speaking voice, which is important to me in purchasing on line classes. I will be looking at purchasing your class on Craftsy but would like to know if it will also have the back ground music in it. I found that very over powering to your instructions.

Quick question – where can I find the blind hem foot? I checked the Brother website, but they don’t have one listed for my serger (Brother 1034D) or the one used in the video (Brother – Project Runway Limited Edition). Thank you!